Those who have once used fuel in this form are not likely to return to the crude and wasteful heating by coal. All the cities and large towns west of the Alleghanies are made disagreeable by bituminous coal smoke. The extent of this annoyance and its detraction from the pleasure of daily living cannot be exaggerated. The atmosphere is more or less vitiated, and the sky obscured, houses, furniture, clothing, are dirty, and clean linen and clean hands and face are not expected. All this is changed where gas is used for fuel. The city becomes cheerful, and the people can see each other. But this is not all. One of the great burdens of our Northern life, fire building and replenishing, disappears, house-keeping is simplified, the expense of servants reduced, cleanliness restored. Add to this that in the gas regions the cost of fuel is merely nominal, and in towns distant some thirty or forty miles it is not half that of coal. It is easy to see that this revolution in fuel will make as great a change in social life as in manufacturing, and that all the change may not be agreeable. This natural gas is a very subtle fluid, somewhat difficult to control, though I have no doubt that invention will make it as safe in our houses as illuminating gas is. So far as I have seen its use, the heat from it is intense and withering. In a closed stove it is intolerable; in an open grate, with a simulated pile of hard coal or logs, it is better, but much less agreeable than soft coal or wood. It does not, as at present used, promote a good air in the room, and its intense dryness ruins the furniture. But its cheapness, convenience, and neatness will no doubt prevail; and we are entering upon a gas age, in which, for the sake of progress, we shall doubtless surrender something that will cause us to look back to the more primitive time with regret. If the gas-wells fail, artificial gas for fuel will doubtless be manufactured.